Hundreds of aggrieved employees say GEICO location in Macon took wages from them: Lawsuit
More than 360 employees at a GEICO call center in Macon say the company owes them unpaid overtime wages, and they’re suing the insurance agency in federal court.
The current and former customer service employees allege it was common for GEICO to make them work more than the amount of time they listed on timekeeping services, and did not pay them for that extra time.
Although two different lawsuits were filed against GEICO by former and current customer service representatives, Chief Judge Marc Treadwell of the Middle District of Georgia decided to merge the cases on Thursday, bringing the hundreds of plaintiffs into one complaint. It comes after GEICO attempted to get one of the cases dismissed since both lawsuits argued the same situation.
It’s unclear how much money the case could be worth if the plaintiffs were to win the suit.
Why, when first employee filed lawsuit in Macon
Amalia Benvenutti, a former customer service representative at GEICO’s Macon branch, filed the first lawsuit against the insurance company on May 11, 2022. The lawsuit explains that customer service representatives handle calls from customers regarding claims and policy services, like coverage and premiums.
The lawsuit says the employees are paid on an hourly basis and are classified as a non-exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, meaning they are eligible for overtime pay.
Benvenutti helped customers create a file with information on their incidents. She would explain the different types of coverage, communicate the status of insurance claims and answer other general questions, according to the lawsuit. To do this, she used a software called Finesse that tracks the hours she’s worked, receives calls from customers and records their information.
Benvenutti and other employees were scheduled to work 8 hours and 15 minutes every day, but were instructed to only enter 7 hours and 45 minutes and take a 30 minute unpaid lunch, according to the lawsuit.
Benvenutti’s lawsuit alleged that she and other employees were required to be ready to take calls immediately at the beginning of their shift, but there was other work that needed to be done to prepare for calls, including booting up computer systems. That often took 10 to 15 minutes. They wouldn’t be paid for that time, Benvenutti’s lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said the same was true for other work that employees did other than taking calls and logging information into Finesse, including reading and answering emails, shutting down computer applications, updating information or documenting tasks at the end of the work day.
The same was true for time spent resolving technical issues, according to Benvenutti’s lawsuit: If a customer service representative had to log out of Finesse and contact the IT department, they weren’t paid for that time. They instead had to make up the time lost by working “off the clock,” according to the lawsuit.
The customer service representatives also weren’t paid properly if they had a call at the end of their shift that went beyond their normal 7-hour and 45-minute shift, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit even says that customer service representatives were paid for 38 hours and 45 minutes rather than 40 hours, which they argue violates the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires employers to pay their employees for all of the hours they’ve worked.
Benvenutti’s attorney also alleged in the lawsuit that employees had a call quota to fulfill every day and they would be disciplined for “poor work performance” if they didn’t hit their quota.
How GEICO responded
GEICO responded to Benvenutti’s allegations in a court filing, saying that although they agreed that customer service representatives are scheduled to work 8 hours and 15 minutes with a 30-minute unpaid lunch break, they deny that their employees were being paid less.
GEICO denied all of Benvenutti’s other claims, including the allegations that employees would be punished if they hadn’t met a call quota, that employees needed to be ready to take calls at the start of their shift, that employees were only compensated based on their hours on Finesse, that employees would have to make up their downtime by IT gets fixed by working off the clock and that employees were not being compensated appropriately if they passed 7 hours and 45 minutes in Finesse.
The company argued that a collective action lawsuit was not necessary, and that Benvenutti failed to state a valid claim or mitigate damages. The company said it “acted in good faith and had reasonable grounds for believing its actions did not violate Fair Labor Standards Act.”
A second lawsuit was filed against the company
Cherale Willis, Sandy Colbert and Tiffaney Peacock filed a separate lawsuit against GEICO in 2023, claiming within the lawsuit that they’re in the same situation as Benvenutti. They filed a separate lawsuit because they were not included in Benvenutti’s notice list, and wished to join.
Since Treadwell decided to merge both cases, the total amount of former and current workers suing GEICO for wage theft is 361, according to court documents.
In response to the lawsuit filed by these three, GEICO wanted the case dismissed because it was similar to Benvenutti’s case. The company also denied that tasks of booting up and shutting down computer programs would need to be paid time under federal law because “they require negligible effort, minimal attention and no skill, and there is no safety factor involved.”
Why both cases were merged into one
“The point of both cases is to include similarly situated employees allegedly damaged by the same practices,” said Treadwell in his order to combine the cases. “Dismissing this action could unfairly prejudice employees’ right to seek redress for the same harm.”
Treadwell also said that merging the cases would reduce the risk of duplicating the evidence, pre-trial proceedings and “the potential of inconsistent rulings.”
This story was originally published June 4, 2024 at 9:25 AM.
